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If there had been any traces of a struggle, I had not noticed them when I came to the edge of the pond. There may have been marks as if a foot had slipped. I was not thinking of evidence when I looked into the water. There were marks enough when the police came to investigate, but they were the marks made by a twelve-stone man in hobnail boots, who had scrambled into, and out of, the pond.
It is called the term, because it does end and terminate business, or else because it is the Terminus ad quem, that is, the end of the countryman's journey, who comes up to the term, and with his hobnail shoes grinds the faces of the poor stones, and so returns again. It is the soul of the year, and makes it quick, which before was dead.
This was all that was visible, and the good Vicar stood doubting whether it was male or female, till catching sight of an immense pair of hobnail boots peeping from the lower extremity of the coat, he made up his mind at once, and began: "My good boy " There was a cackling laugh from under the carpet bag, and a harsh grating voice replied: "I be a gurl."
He slid from me like a thing immaterial, and was off over the moors with a swiftness which might well have baffled any clodhopper, a race whose calves are generally absorbed in the soles of their hobnail shoes.
There was no pitying smile on Adair's face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was written all over him in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his stand at the wicket.
"Pete Grimes did that with his hobnail, cowhide boots!" said Eddy, sternly. "With his hammer, you mean," interposed Charley. "With his boot, sir," persisted Eddy, with increasing eloquence. "Didn't I see him, me and Dan Murphy? Didn't we stand there by the coal-bin, sir? He booted him well, Mis' Parlin. I'll tell you where he did it; here on the left side, ma'am. Look where the hair sticks up!
It was plain that she did not know him. How could she know him, he thought bitterly, in the rough blue blouse and coarse clothing and heavy hobnail boots of a Swiss peasant? His hair was shaggy and uncut, and the skin of his face was so peeled and blistered and scorched that his disguise was sufficient to conceal him even from his wife.
At last he rallied, and seemed to be getting better. Now they longed for a ship, because they hoped that breathing again the pure sea air, unmixed with any exhalation from the land, might restore him. He was at last able to accompany them about the town. Everybody will remember old Hobnail, the coloured boot and shoe-maker at Freetown. What a jolly, good-natured, genial-hearted man he was!
We have known men who died from the use of tobacco, and others who met a like fate from whisky, who were never fully in the state denominated drunk. Men may earn a hobnail liver and dropsy by the constant, steady use of alcoholic drink taken systematically, so as always to keep within the limits of intoxication; or they may, in the same way, get a diabetes or Bright's disease.
There lay Tom; hobnail Tom! a bacon- munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and yet a man; a dear brave human heart notwithstanding; capable of devotion and unselfishness. The boy's better spirit was touched, and it kindled his imagination to realize the abject figure of poor clodpole Tom, and surround it with a halo of mournful light. His soul was alive.
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